Re:Ask HN: How do you scale salary for part-time work?
by stepbeek on Monday August 19, 2019 @03:19PM
(#20740887)
This is a really good point. I don't think I'd given enough weight to this offline processing before.
Re:Ask HN: How do you scale salary for part-time work?
by diminoten on Monday August 19, 2019 @04:06PM
(#20741308)
The way I've thought about it is when I'm "salaried" I'm being paid for my brain, not my time, and this cuts both ways; if I can meet the goals the company has set for me in 5 hours, that's all the time I'm going to take. However, if I need 50 hours to figure something out, that's what I'll do.
The understanding I expect to have with my employer is that I expect them not to give me more work than I can reasonably do in ~40 hours, on average. It's not a cut and dry calculus, but if I feel I'm being given more work than I agree to do, that starts a conversation.
I could see the role you're looking to fill being something similar; the agreement you have with the employee is that you, the employer, won't put more things on their plate than they can generally handle in 2-3 days of working each week.
For a permanent hire I think it would be reasonable to ask more than half. Even working 50% hours, one does not usually completely unplug during other half - even if not active on corporate systems it's likely they're taking problems away and thinking them over.
I think you may be surprised by the output you get - when I have worked with part time technical staff in the past, it often seems to help grant a laser focus of sorts.